Rishita Chaudhary

One of my (many) contrarian beliefs is that we do not have strong enough preferences. We often blame social media or the speed of information as the reason why we’re easily distracted, but the real reason behind our inability to focus has less to do with the sheer quantity of media and more to do with our laziness when it comes to distinguishing... See more

Perhaps the most hopeful thing about being alive is that we are never finished and complete. Perhaps the most exasperating is that we are never entirely new, that we are nested with every self we have ever been, each stage of our development shaped by the singular needs and tensions of each preceding stage, our character shaped by how those needs... See more

“This is the entire essence of life: Who are you? What are you?” the young Leo Tolstoy distilled the eternal quest in his diary as he wrestled with moral development and the search for selfhood — a search that begins as soon as we become conscious, reaches a crescendo in the formative years of adolescence and young adulthood, and continues until... See more

apolytus (“the moment you realize you are changing as a person”).

“What I have always wanted is to expand the frame of humanity, to shift the brackets of images and ideas,” Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects in The Message (public library) — his soulful and sobering reckoning with the power of words and the power structures roiling beneath the landscape of permission for making the images and ideas we call art. What... See more